HOUSTON  The famous picture of the most important moment of Kevin Dyson's football life hangs in his hallway. It shows the last second of Super Bowl XXXIV, and if it is worth a thousand words, all of them are about the agony of coming close.

There Dyson is, in a blue Tennessee Titans' uniform, tackled after catching a pass at the 1-yard line by a St. Louis Ram linebacker named Mike Jones, stretching frantically for an immortal touchdown that never came.

It is as dramatic a final scene as the Super Bowl has ever produced, the Rams' 23-16 win and the Titans' loss preserved for all time by the yard Dyson could not get.

Four years later, on another team getting ready for another Super Bowl, he has been reminded again that he never will.

"I remember the yellow paint in the end zone," said the Carolina receiver. "It was so huge and it felt like I was so close. That's why you see the picture of me reaching.

"But then I looked up and the last second had ticked off and the clock was gone, and it was still a mile away."

If justice has a heart, Dyson catches a touchdown pass Sunday. Whether the Panthers win or lose, he at last gets in the end zone.

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Remember the play? "I'll draw it for you," Dyson said, asking for a pen and paper, the route enshrined in his memory, if not its name.

"Something Z under," he said, and then began to scribble. With six seconds left and the Titans at the 10, he went in motion from left to right, then broke up the field to take the Steve McNair pass at about the 3, slicing toward the middle to get into the end zone and force overtime.

But Jones read the play just in time, rushed over and got just enough of a body on Dyson to bring him down.

It is one of those crossroad moments, where so many fates change. The power of the "if" word.

"If he goes one more step up the field, I walk in," Dyson said. "If he peels off any earlier, I never get the ball.

"For three or four months afterward, that was my only drive. I kept hearing about how that was my 15 minutes of fame. I wanted to prove everybody wrong. I wanted to get back and redeem myself. I wanted to get that one yard."

He later met with Jones to watch the play for a sports publication.

"It did me some good to see how humble he was about it," Dyson said. "He told me it could have gone either way."